By John Nielson
Dallas Morning News

ELLIS COUNTY, Texas — Firefighters in rural Ellis County are frustrated with what they call an unreliable and erratic communications system that could jeopardize public safety.

Personnel from several emergency service districts, many of them volunteers, met with the county communications director and County Commissioner Bill Dodson on Thursday night to discuss the problems.

They described locations throughout the county where the radio signals are spotty, weak or nonexistent, leaving first-responders unable to communicate with dispatchers. Many of the outages occur in creek bottoms or other low-lying areas.

Volunteers said they were unable to get a signal to dispatchers after at least one car crash this week. A sheriff's deputy had to call on his cellphone to relay information.

Some personnel say the lack of communication was a factor in the recent choking death of a 1-year-old in the western portion of the county.

"I'd like to see a resolution on it soon, but they've been throwing money at it for about 10 years," said Chrissy Rogalski, president of the Ellis County Firefighter's Association.

The county's communication guru and Sheriff's Department captain, John Knight, said the cause of the sporadic outages is a mystery. In addition to geographic nuances, the dead spots could be caused by an out-of-range transmitter, a dead battery, faulty handsets or the lack of training, he said.

"It's not going to be any one thing," Capt. Knight said. "If we can identify the problem, we can fix it."

The outages are likened to a typical cellphone call in a rural area. One minute the reception is good, the next minute, it vanishes.

"It has to work every time," Jack Dineen, president of Emergency District No. 6, said of the communications system. "These firemen, they have to be able to count on these radios. It can't be hit-and-miss."

The county replaced its aging communications system about four years ago, Capt. Knight said, and will have to transform the current system to an FCC-mandated narrow bandwidth mode within the next five years, he said.

The new system, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2013, will allow for more radio traffic across the same frequency.

"We improved the equipment that we had at the most minimal cost we could afford because we knew this [narrow bandwidth] issue was going to arise," Capt. Knight said.

He said he would continue to investigate what's causing problems with the system and meet with the vendor, ComTex Communications, which provides maintenance on the system, to look for answers.

Mr. Dineen said he was pleased that Mr. Dodson and Capt. Knight were eager to find solutions. In the meantime, he said, firefighters need to be heard.

"If we can communicate with folks in space," Mr. Dineen said, "we can surely communicate with folks that are a few miles away."

Copyright 2008 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS